When was domestic violence implemented

Most lawyers are not aware of the concept of service providers and therefore do not coordinate with them in providing adequate legal services, according to the Lawyers Collective report. Furthermore, the judiciary is hardly aware of the role of the service providers, for either filling in the Domestic Incident Report, or for counselling, the report said.

Further, speedy trials — the Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act mandates that the magistrate shall endeavour to dispose of every application filed, within a period of sixty from first day of its hearing — are not a reality.

Ragini Sharma, who filed her case against her husband and his parents for domestic violence about a year ago, had only received partial compensation after nine months, while the rest will be given once the divorce proceedings are finalised, she told IndiaSpend.

Domestic violence is often treated as a family affair requiring counselling both by the police and the courts, according to the Quest for justice report by the Tata school of Social sciences. Instead they registered the cases in the Community Service Register and attempted to resolve the dispute through informal mechanisms, the report said. This article first appeared on IndiaSpend , a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit. Share your perspective on this article with a post on ScrollStack, and send it to your followers.

Contribute Now. Source: Crime in India report from Missing, incomplete data under the prevention of domestic violence act Though the domestic violence legislation was enacted in , the National Crime Records Bureau only started collecting data under the law in , according to this Lok Sabha answer. Why domestic violence is common and justice slow After a case has been filed, many different kinds of organisations play a role in ensuring justice and rehabilitation to the victim.

There are problems at each level of implementation. Further, these organisations lack adequate funding, the report said. Source: National Crime Records Bureau Domestic violence still seen as an internal family affair Domestic violence is often treated as a family affair requiring counselling both by the police and the courts, according to the Quest for justice report by the Tata school of Social sciences.

This model has been widely used and found to be effective in health policy analysis [ 6 , 10 , 11 ].

Open-ended questions were added during data collection depending on the stories and knowledge shared by the informants. Some factors that influence implementation of DVPC law within the health system were identified as themes from the literature review and from consideration of the key elements of existing models for health systems designed to address violence against women, including direct service delivery, human resources, financing, coordination, leadership and governance [ 12 , 13 ].

In order to see the complex policy dynamic and revolution and to access to the key informants, three field site coordinators in Hanoi and two selected provinces were invited to explain the objectives of the study, to advocate for the project locally and to introduce participants and arrange suitable times for data collection.

The first author approached policy actors at the national level through introductions by the field coordinator who worked in the Ministry of Health. Once key informants were contacted and interviewed, other participants were identified via the snow ball technique. All participants in the two provinces were approached via introductions with the field coordinator who worked in the provincial health department.

Data collection was conducted in Hanoi national level first to gain an overview of the policy process. This was followed by fieldwork in Hai Duong and Bac Giang province. Written informed consent was obtained before interviews and FGDs. One interview was conducted via skype because the informant was abroad. The length of the interviews ranged from 40 to min. FGDs were conducted in meeting rooms of the commune health centres.

The average length of FGD was about 60 min. All interviews and FGDs were conducted in Vietnamese. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed.

One key informant requested not to be recorded, and contemporaneous written notes were taken during the interview. Review of 63 documents related to the main law on DV prevention and control was conducted. These documents included reports, policy documents, training materials and journal articles in English or Vietnamese, published between and Secondary data pertaining to DV in Vietnam nationally and in the selected provinces between and were collected and reviewed.

The research team gained formal approval from the deputy head of the Department of Families that allowed access to secondary data for research purposes. Local authorities at the commune level are responsible to report DV cases in their communities on template forms periodically, and then send the reports to the district and provincial levels.

This data includes aggregated data from the health system. NVivo 10 and Mindjet software were used to analyse the data. According to this model, all themes process, content, context and actors were reviewed and analysed.

Policy processes agenda-setting, development and implementation with the focus on health system are the main focus of the current paper. The policy content may lead to the different responses of actors and may effect on the health system. Different policy actors were mapped. Involvement of actors can be influenced by their agendas, mechanism and powers. Themes were reviewed and refined after initial coding. Results were extracted and mapped based on relevant codes and themes.

Data were analysed in Vietnamese language and the codes and report were written in English. Selected illustrative verbatim quotes from Vietnamese transcripts were translated into English.

Policy documents and reports were reviewed using a policy proforma to summarise the content of the documents. The content of different policy documents was compared. Secondary data from administration information systems in Vietnam nationally and in two provinces were reviewed and analysed.

However, it became immediately apparent that the quality of data was weak, with massive under-reporting of incident cases of DV: the rate of households with DV incidents recorded nationally from to ranged from 0.

The total number of DV cases in in Bac Giang and Hai Duong province was and 78 cases respectively, which lack face validity when compared to much higher estimates in self-report surveys with women in community settings in Vietnam [ 15 ]. As a result, only limited indicators relating to health services have been presented in the findings. The law was developed between and with the aim of preventing domestic violence in Vietnam, especially violence against women.

This Law came into effect from the first of July On May , Directive No. According to this document, the implementation guidelines were to be developed by a committee coordinated by the MOCST. The MOH also participated in the development of the implementation guidelines within the health system.

The evolution and implementation of the DVPC Law is described in two parts: 1 policy development — , 2 policy adoption — and 3 implementation within the health system — The first stream is the problem stream. DV received public attention through various civil society organizations, supported by the government led newspapers and national television channels.

Research on DV was conducted in order to raise awareness of the public on this issued, primarily with the support of NGOs and civil society organisations in Vietnam, and financial and technical support from development partners such as UNFPA. In addition, behaviour change communication activities were carried out UNFPA project , targeting the general public through the existing network of governmental organisations, NGOs and mass organizations.

The mass media was active in raising public awareness with support from UN agencies, particularly after revelation of a number of severe cases and tragic stories. The second stream is the policy stream: although the specific focus of this paper is on DVPC Law since , the policy was preceded by several decades of activities. In , Vietnamese delegates attended the International conference on Population and Development, which resulted in gender equality becoming an essential component of policymaking and implementation in the area of reproductive health.

In , as a member of the United Nations, Vietnam participated in a workshop to set up the MDGs commitments, which included a goal and multiple targets and indicators related to gender equality. Once the commitments were made, Vietnam received considerable support from international organizations including United Nation agencies and international non-government organisations to achieve the goals.

Decision in May was signed by the Prime Minister ratifying the Vietnam Strategy on the Family, which sets targets to reduce DV in the community. The third key stream is the political stream. Therefore, a window of opportunity opened which facilitated DVPC policy development [ 14 ].

In implementing the National Assembly resolution on the development of laws and ordinance No. One was the Drafting board and the other was the Editing committee to assist the Drafting board in collecting information, editing and writing the draft law. The content of the draft law took into account international standards on DV legislation and experiences learned from intervention projects and other countries during law development.

The consultation process for the development of DVPC Law included an advocacy workshop, online comments via a website, and technical meetings.

The workshop included participants from different national and provincial organizations in different sectors. Some NGOs and UN agencies sent their comments, research results or pilot intervention projects directly to the National Assembly to serve as references in the development of the law and implementation guidelines.

After three major consultation workshops in the three main geographic regions in Vietnam, the gender-neutral concept of domestic violence was adopted, instead of acknowledging that the key issue is violence against women. The roles of different actors were clarified and listed, and agreement was reached on health insurance coverage. The approval of this law demonstrate significant advances by the Vietnamese government toward ensuring gender equality and protecting rights of the people, especially women.

This actor developed guidelines for the implementation. This Circular was revised on In practice, the implementation of DVPC Law within the health system was slow and key milestones were delayed. Challenges for implementation were predicted early. In late , MOH arranged three regional seminars to allow representatives of provincial health departments to discuss the implications if the guidelines. Challenges were identified, mainly because the guidelines were seen to affect all parts of the healthcare system in terms of service delivery and human resources.

Most participants from provincial health departments perceived health services for DV survivors as impractical and unfeasible MOH workshop report, As this MOH policy makers said:. We realised that the integration of DV to the health system would be impractical and unfeasible from the development stage. In practice, no health provider was trained to work with DV victims and we need support from others system.

The key components of intervention pilot project were to increase the participants of multiple sectors, coordination and accountability [ 17 ]. By the end of , only 24 out of 63 provinces had reports on the implementation of DVPC within the health system. The data was poor and under-reported, capturing only 15, cases that accessed the health services over the 5 year period — And according to the report of the evaluation workshop in conducted by MOH, the main barriers of implementation of the DVPC regulation were the health system lack of readiness to integrate DVPC into their service model, a lack of budget for DVPC implementation, a lack of trained practitioners capable of responding to DV, and the fact that the DVPC regulation was not obligated, therefore, no reward or sanction was applied.

A project officer stated:. In practice, we know that only provinces with intervention project funded by NGOs or international agencies implemented the regulation such as training, providing services and referral.

Several provinces without fund only provide basic care and treatment services. If we did well, there is no reward. The project was successful locally, but it was not scaled up throughout Hai Duong province and nationwide due to insufficient resources.

A health manager said:. For example, DVPC leaflets were run out, new recruited health providers were not trained and the software for entry data of DV was died.

The provincial government approved the plan to scale up the pilot project to the whole province as commitment with donor. A health provider at district hospital shared his de-motivation of the DVPC implementation after the end of pilot project:.

Before , the annual state budget for DV prevention and control was mainly dependent upon external donor allocations in selected provinces only and provincial budgets if any. After , the DV program was subsumed under the national program on gender equality.

However, even with this change, the budget in reality was much lower than initially promised e. Therefore the implementation of the DVPC became short-term focused, rather than being a long term process. However, health managers often considered our money would be used as a temporary specific project. An project officer shared:.

There are too many things related to disease treatment and prevention to deal with and to spend money. Health managers were awared of the new Circular on DVPC, however, asking hospitals to implement without clear and specific guidance is difficult. For example: who should screen the DV survivors: an administrator, a nurse or a doctor; who should provide counselling and reporting: new hospital social worker staffs note: should be recruited from as new regulation or doctors again.

Many district hospitals even have not established social work unit. However, this gendered construction was excluded from the conceptualisation of DV adopted the official definition of gender-based violence in the DVPC policy in Vietnam [ 19 ].

Although the official position was to reduce emphasis on the gendered nature of DV, it is important to note that interviews with most key actors in this study suggested that the main objective of the law on DVPC is still primarily designed to protect women, who are over-represented as victims and survivors of domestic violence. A representative of NGO stated:. Evidence of this was found in secondary data and baseline data. Furthermore, DV in Vietnam was defined in more narrow terms listing 4 types physical, emotional, sexual and economic violence with 9 specific acts of violence.

Similarly, the focus on physical violence acts in Vietnam is relatively narrow and tends to be consequence-oriented. This is one of the more recent elements of the law, and was added to improve the legal and financial protection of DV survivors who are covered by the health insurance scheme. From November, , the health insurance law was changed to reflect the new DVPC Law, with the aim to better meet the needs of both clients and health providers [ 21 ].

Arguably however, it is impossible to implement a policy that is defective in its conception. A good policy should be formulated based on evidence and international standards.

Without proper standards, a policy may proceed in unexpected directions. For example, the data from the DV reporting system in Vietnam was not sufficient to be used to assess MDG3 achievement in terms of violence against women, and indeed, cannot be used for comparisons with other countries.

In Vietnam, this problem is reflected in the lack of indicators on violence against women in the national report on MDG achievements. There are significant gaps between the content of DVPC policies and its implementation within the health system. DV survivors face multiple challenges when accessing health care services.

One of the key issues is the lack of knowledge and skills of health workers. According to the interview data, health workers generally do not receive training on violence screening and counselling except for those in the selected province involved in the UNFPA intervention project during — The project later, applied to representatives of other district in Hai Duong. A health manager in Bac Giang stated:.

The guidance was still general. Implementation without clear guidance is challenged and costly. Health workers interviewed in this study indicated that they usually skip screening and reporting violence unless women or men declare it to them and ask to have it reported.

Rarely, patients reported themselves as domestic violence survivors. Another barrier to implementation is the lack of qualified social work staff. There are very few social workers in the Vietnamese health system who have specific responsibility to support DV survivors. Typically, these units are tasked with counselling patients and family members, providing social supports and charity.

Women who experience DV and who accessed health care services usually are not offered counselling by social workers or other appropriately trained health professionals, and there is little or no follow-up when women leave hospital.

One health manager in the district hospital commented:. This paper is a necessary piece of evidence to pursue legal processes [ 24 , 25 ]. As a consequence, survivors without a health insurance card may face a double crisis resulting from the consequences of DV and the cost of treatment. The main revisions included:. Provision of guidance for health workers to report multiple incidents and combinations of DV experiences e.

Reducing the frequency of the DV report from 6-monthly to an annual report, to reduce workload; and,. Introducing the provision that hospitals should arrange temporary shelter for DV survivors for up to 24 h in an establishment within the health care system. After 24 h, it is now recommended that survivors are referred to other organizations in the community for further social support. These revision were based on the feedback of health care providers on challenges of implementation.

A provision of VAWA that created a federal civil right of action—a right of action that would have allowed a victim of violence, such as sexual assault or domestic violence, to sue the perpetrator for civil damages resulting from the attack—was challenged as unconstitutional under United States law.

Although that particular provision of the law was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, the remainder of the law remained intact. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of created a new form of relief for victims of domestic violence in the United States. This report contains a survey of U. Enhanced Penalties Statutes , by Eve Zamora, describes the different kinds of enhanced penalties for domestic violence that have been enacted in different states in the United States.

Lemon, December , provides an excellent overview of some of the issues that should be considered in drafting anti-stalking legislation. For example, the Act sets forth the circumstances under which an ex parte order may be granted and requires that a hearing be held within ten days after the issuance of such an order.

The Act also describes penalties for violations of both OFPs and No Contact Orders, orders issued against a defendant in criminal proceedings for domestic violence, and describes how law enforcement officials should enforce such orders.

For example, the Act waives the filing fees for orders of protection and provides that an individual filing for an OFP may request that his or her address not be disclosed to the public. Section Under this law, an individual commits the crime of domestic assault by causing another to fear immediate bodily harm or death, or inflicting, or attempting to inflict, such harm.

Penalties are increased when the perpetrator has previously committed one or more domestic assaults within a certain period of time. Minnesota has also enacted a domestic violence arrest law , Section The Act requires social services districts to offer emergency shelter and other services, including advocacy, counseling and referrals.

The Act requires shelters that receive funding under its provisions must to maintain a confidential address and also mandates that other government agencies keep such addresses confidential.

Finally, this provision requires the defendant to pay the victim restitution for damages in the case of a violation of a restraining order issued by another jurisdiction. The Minnesota state court system has also offered on-line access to the forms required for filing an Order for Protection.